In view of recent breaking news about conditions at an Adelanto ICE holding facility, University of California, Davis, offers an expert who has written about conditions at immigration detention facilities. The paper: “The black box within a black box: Solitary confinement practices in a subset of U.S. immigrant detention facilities,” addresses conditions at Adelanto and other facilities. The paper, by Caitlin Patler, assistant professor of sociology,  and co-authors Jeff Sacha, UC Davis, and Nicholas Branic, was published in the Journal of Population Research. Patler’s research is informed by nearly two decades of work in immigrants’ rights organizations focused on immigration detention, access to education for undocumented youth, and low-wage labor markets. 

Contact her: patler@ucdavis.edu

More background on Patler here:

Caitlin Patler, assistant professor of sociology, can discuss immigration detention policy, executive action on deferred action programs (DACA and DAPA), and the situation of undocumented youth and families. Patler's research documented, for the first time, that transitioning out of undocumented status to legal status can lead to positive emotional consequences and improvements to overall psychological wellbeing. The results, published in a paper in the journal Social Science and Medicine, analyze the health impacts of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, comparing DACA program recipients to undocumented young people who did not have DACA status. Patler's research has also documented conditions within immigrant detention facilities, including inequality in access to family visitation, published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.

Link to all UC Davis immigration, labor and human trafficking experts here.